


Dance Space

by orphan_account



Series: The Mermaid Theory [2]
Category: Glee
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-29
Updated: 2011-05-29
Packaged: 2017-10-19 21:19:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/205314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A companion piece/partial sequel to The Mermaid Theory. Kurt’s POV – “Five minutes ago, Blaine was a potential future boyfriend. Now he’s someone else’s actual boyfriend.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dance Space

**Author's Note:**

> Many, many thanks to my awesome beta, tlaina, and to my cheerleader and sounding board, mrs_viola_swamp .

He can’t pin down the exact moment he fell in love with Blaine. The transition from unexpected confidant to shameless crush to imaginary boyfriend had been so swift and seamless, Kurt hardly noticed. He knows the moment Blaine breaks his heart for the first time, though. 

It happens at 11:34 pm on October 28th. He’s in that fuzzy place between waking and sleeping, curled up in bed, down comforter pulled up to his chin. He’d stayed up later than normal to work on the seating arrangements for the reception and can’t quite stop thinking about where to put his dad’s cousin, Marty. He’s family, so he has to be somewhat near the head table, but he’s also a creepy drunk, so he wants him far, far away from his pretty young friends. The loud buzz of an incoming text startles him and he kicks out involuntarily, smacking his knee into the wall. Once he recovers enough to roll over and grab his phone from the nightstand, he almost forgets about the pain entirely when he sees that the text is from Blaine.

 **From Blaine A.:  
Want to meet me in Columbus on Saturday? I’m staying with my boyfriend for the weekend and he wants to meet you.**

Kurt blinks and reads the text again, positive he somehow misread it the first time. He gets to “my boyfriend,” though, and he can’t read another word because his brain has finally processed the meaning. 

Blaine has a boyfriend. For a long moment, Kurt just lies there, his blood rushing audibly in his ears, his nose and lips tingling faintly, and his vision tunneling until he no longer sees  _boyfriend_ , just a small black smudge on a light blue background. He blinks, his vision clearing, and there’s that word again; very real and apparently not going anywhere. 

He wants to kick the wall again to punish himself for being so stupid. Of course Blaine has a boyfriend. He’s basically perfection in human form, so why would he be single? 

Realizing Blaine is still waiting for an answer, he shoots off a response claiming he’d love to meet his boyfriend but he has all this work to do for the wedding. Oh, shucks. 

Really, Kurt can’t help but feel a little betrayed. Blaine had given no indication that he was already taken. Instead, he called Kurt every other day just to talk.  _He_  called  _Kurt_. He drove all the way to Lima twice a week just to hang out at Breadstix or watch a movie. He took Kurt to go see  _Rent_  and even insisted on paying for his ticket. 

Kurt isn’t foolish enough to believe any of that meant they were dating, but he had definitely thought they were heading in that direction. Five minutes ago, Blaine was a potential future boyfriend. Now he’s someone else’s  _actual_  boyfriend and the sudden change in status feels like a punch to the stomach. 

He turns on his bedside lamp and pads over to the large posterboard that is propped up on his desk. He stares at the diagram of Table 8 and the ten small color-coded stickers placed around it in a circle, the one green sticker labeled “Blaine Anderson” in particular. He hadn’t actually invited Blaine yet, but Kurt had carved out a place for him at the table of Carole’s old high school friends anyway, sure that Blaine would say yes if he asked. Carefully, Kurt peels Blaine’s sticker off the board and drops it into the wastebasket next to his desk. Finding the sheaf of blue stickers reserved for members of the groom’s family, Kurt jots down “Marty Hummel” and places the new sticker on what used to be Blaine’s spot. Nodding to himself once, he goes back to bed, satisfied that he’s placed everyone exactly where they belong. 

\--- 

What follows is a short period of time where Kurt is angry with Blaine, upset that had been led on and made to believe that he could actually find happiness for once. It doesn’t last long, though, before Kurt is forced to push any bitterness towards Blaine away. After the drama of Karofsky’s return to McKinley and Kurt’s sudden relocation to Dalton, he doesn’t have room for those emotions any more. Blaine can’t be his boyfriend? Well, fine. Kurt needs a friend and a shoulder to cry on and a guide and Blaine excels at being all of those things. Meeting Daniel should only reinforce that Blaine will never be his, but instead it reminds him of what he’s missing and what he’s wanted all along.

“Kurt!”

He turns away from Mercedes and Rachel to find Blaine waving at him from across the parking lot. Next to him is a tall and slightly older boy with dark shaggy hair, wearing jeans and a truly ordinary charcoal gray pea coat. He’s almost positive it’s Burberry though, so at least it’s well-made, if a little boring. 

“Is that the boyfriend?” Mercedes asks, her voice muffled from trying not to move her lips.

“Yeah, I think so. I better go say hello. I’ll see you guys next weekend, okay?” Kurt says before leaving them both with a hug.

He crosses the fifty feet or so that separate him from Blaine and The Boyfriend, feeling strangely self-conscious. It’s like he can feel the movement of every muscle in his legs and instead of them all operating on their own, now he has to control each of them and make sure they do what they’re supposed to in the correct sequence. He takes a deep breath and reminds himself that he’s been walking successfully since he was 11 months old.

“Hey!” Blaine greets as he reaches them. “I wanted you to meet someone. Kurt Hummel, this is my boyfriend, Daniel Thornton. Daniel, this is Kurt.” 

They shake hands and Kurt concentrates on making his polite smile seem natural and on not squeezing Daniel’s hand too hard. 

“Good to finally meet you, Kurt. Blaine talks about you all the time, so it’s nice to finally have a face to put to the name,” Daniel says, smiling easily.

Kurt wants to say that Blaine hardly ever talks about Daniel, because it would be true, but he’s sure it would sound petty. “Likewise,” he says instead. “Did you enjoy the performance?”

“I did! The Warblers were great, as always.” He shoots a smile to Blaine, who ducks his head in thanks. “And you’ll have to tell your friends from New Directions that they rocked pretty hard, too. Especially with  _Valerie_. That dancing was seriously impressive.” 

Daniel bounces a little on his toes and Kurt doesn’t doubt his enthusiasm for a second. 

 _Great,_  Kurt thinks,  _he’s actually a nice guy. Now I don’t even have a valid reason to hate him._

“They ‘rocked'? You’ve never once said that the Warblers rocked. Did you like McKinley’s performance better than ours?” Blaine demands, faking a pout.

“Uh, no?” Daniel says, looking to Kurt for help. When he receives none, he turns a contrite face to Blaine. “It’s just that you guys did Train, and I  _hate_  Train! I can’t help it if The Zutons are better songwriters.”

“What’s your excuse for the  _Dirty Dancing_  tribute, then?” Blaine asks, his arms folded across his chest and one brow arched in derision. 

“Patrick Swayze. He trumps everything,” Daniel says with a shrug. 

“The next time I’m at your dorm, I’m confiscating your DVD of  _Roadhouse_ ,” Blaine warns.

“But his character’s name is Dalton; it reminds me of you!” Daniel says, fluttering his eyelashes at Blaine. They stare at each other for a beat before they both crack up with laughter.

Kurt watches all of this with a detached sense of annoyance and reluctant amusement.  _They are disgustingly cute together_ , he admits to himself. Watching Blaine with Daniel reminds him of how Blaine used to act around him before he was forced to transfer to Dalton. He wants that back. He wants the fun, jokey, flirty side to make a comeback and he silently resolves to make it happen. 

“Kurt, Blaine! We gotta go!” Wes yells from their bus window. 

“Well, don’t let me keep you guys. Kurt, it was great to meet you,” Daniel says and reaches out for another handshake.

“Thanks, you too. I’ll be sure to pass along the praise to my friends.” He returns the handshake without much +fervor. 

Daniel leans down to kiss Blaine and when it lingers past just a peck, Kurt turns away to face the bus, where Wes is now waving madly at them. He holds up a hand to indicate that Wes should hold on. They’ll be there in a minute if Blaine ever stops making out with his boyfriend. 

He’s startled when Blaine grabs his elbow and begins walking briskly towards the bus, dragging him along. Kurt doesn’t want to notice the huge smile on his face or that his lips are redder than they were a minute ago but he really can’t help it. 

“So, what did you think?” Blaine asks.

“He’s perfectly charming, which isn’t surprising at all. I mean, he managed to get  _you_ , so he has to be pretty great.” 

Kurt curses himself, thinking he’s given too much away, but Blaine just looks over his shoulder at where Daniel must still be standing and somehow smiles even wider. 

“Yeah, he’s incredible.”

Kurt does not sigh, but he wants to.  _So are you_ , he thinks.

\--- 

He thinks about Blaine kissing him all the time. He thinks about Blaine doing more than kissing him, too, but kisses takes up about 80% of his daydream space. He’s invented hundreds of different scenarios which all amount to the same thing and that is Blaine giving him his first real kiss.

His favorite, at least for today, starts with them watching a movie in Kurt’s room. The lights are off and Andrew, his roommate, is elsewhere. It’s just the two of them and the soft glow of the TV. Something funny happens on screen and when Kurt looks at Blaine to see if he’s laughing, too, Blaine is looking right back at him. Neither of them breaks eye contact as the laughter and the awareness of the movie slips away. Slowly, Blaine raises a hand to comb through his hair before resting it on the back of his head and using it to pull Kurt’s face toward him. Their lips meet gently and the daydream stutters and restarts, the same breathless imaginary moment on infinite repeat. 

\--- 

Kurt isn’t sure why he agreed to come to this party. No, that’s not exactly true. He’s knows  _why_ , he’s just regretting his decision. Blaine had asked if he wanted to go in a low, intimate tone and looked up at him through his eyelashes and Kurt had to say yes. If he’d asked Kurt to rob a bank in the exact same way, he would probably already be in jail by now. So really, Kurt being here is all Blaine’s fault. 

He blames Blaine for the stares he receives from the loud and obnoxiously drunk college kids as Daniel leads them through the party and for the red plastic cup full of foul-smelling liquid that Daniel pushes into his hand. Whoever picked the music for this party has a serious love for Ja Rule and no idea how to balance that with something that people might actually want to listen to. Kurt can’t blame Blaine for that, but he  _can_  blame him for being so gorgeous that he can’t say no to him, and he plans to all night long.

Kurt’s busy cursing the curve of Blaine’s lips when he’s asked about his prior drinking experience. It’s embarrassing, but he tells the truth, if only because it seems like a good opening to ask for something a little less potent. Blaine, ever the gentleman, doesn’t even wait for him to ask and once he has his beloved Diet Coke fortifying him, everything seems a lot funnier and a lot less irritating. If nothing else, the party is a good place to people watch and play mental makeover. The girl across the room who decided to pair bright blue leggings with red moccasin boots could certainly use one.

They move out to the garage to observe the beer pong game and cheer loudly whenever Daniel manages to sink a shot. He’s actually not bad but his partner is terrible and they’re playing against a pair of beer pong savants, so they’re steadily losing. Just after the second re-rack, Blaine announces that he needs a new drink.

“No, you can’t go!” Daniel protests, hooking an arm around Blaine’s neck and kissing him wetly on the cheek. “You’re my good luck charm. You’re the only thing that’s kept us from losing.”

“But I’m thirsty! And I hate to break it to you but you’re losing anyway. I’ll be right back, I promise,” Blaine says, but laughs and doesn't even attempt to pull away.

Daniel just holds on tighter and nuzzles Blaine’s hair. Kurt notices that Daniel’s opponents are visibly uncomfortable with the display of affection, though they don’t look hostile yet. While he doesn’t appreciate the homophobic vibe he can feel rolling off them, he sort of agrees with them. He doesn’t want to watch this either. 

“Here, give me your cup. I’ll get you something,” Kurt offers. 

He pulls Blaine’s cup from an unresisting hand and heads back to the bar without waiting for a response. Hopefully, by the time he gets back, Daniel will have gone back to losing miserably and the awkward atmosphere will have diffused. 

At the card table-cum-bar, a tall frat boy stares down at him blearily when he reaches for the bottle of Bacardi.

“Are you even old enough to drink?” he asks Kurt.

“No. Are you?” Kurt asks. He knows he looks young but he’s tired of hearing about it.

“Nope. But you look like you’re in eighth grade. Who let you in here?”

Kurt wonders just how drunk this guy is and if he would get chased if he just walked away. He’s swaying slightly but his words are still pretty clear. Kurt chooses a cautious response for once in his life.

“I’m a friend of Daniel Thornton’s.” Friend, rival for his boyfriend’s affections. Whatever.

“Ohhhhh. That makes so much more sense now,” he says, eyeing Kurt up and down. “Dude, Daniel’s my boy! I’m totally cool with the whole homo thing. Who cares who you fuck, you know?” 

He holds up a fist and Kurt rolls his eyes before pounding it with his own. The guy tosses him a “later, bro,” and wanders off to the backyard. Kurt looks up to find Blaine watching him from the garage door, obviously trying not to laugh.

“Hey. Make a new friend?” Blaine asks when Kurt rejoins him.

“Yeah. I didn’t get his number but maybe I’ll find him later and see if he wants to be pen pals,” Kurt replies. 

Blaine’s laugh is loud and sudden and it makes Daniel flub his last shot. Kurt smiles into his cup and does his best to look innocent when Daniel glares in their direction.

A couple hours later, while Kurt is doing his best to convince the girl wearing the blue leggings and red boots that Superman is not a look that is in for Fall, Daniel pulls him aside. He leans too far into Kurt’s personal space to be entirely sober and when he opens his mouth, the slurred words and whiskey breath confirm his suspicions. 

“Kurt, man. I have to ask you something while Blaine’s in the bathroom. He didn’t want me to say anything to you but I knew you wouldn’t mind.”

Kurt just raises an eyebrow in response. He’s already offended that Daniel’s gone against Blaine’s wishes to talk to him about whatever is so pressing and he doesn’t trust himself to remain polite.

“So, I know the original plan was for you guys both to crash at the dorms tonight, but you haven’t been drinking and I was kinda hoping to get some alone time with Blaine,” Daniel says, smirking slightly.

“And you want me to drive back to Dalton on my own." 

“Yeah, exactly! I knew you’d understand. It’s just Blaine and I never get to see each other and I miss him, you know? And this way you get to spend the night in your own bed instead of on the floor. Works out for everyone, right?” He claps a hand on Kurt’s shoulder and leaves it there. 

Before Kurt can decide whether to shrug the unwelcome touch off or just ignore it in his continued attempt to make nice, Blaine joins them. He’s drunk, too, as far as Kurt can tell, but the only effect alcohol seems to have on him is to make him extremely cheerful. 

“Hey, what’s going on?” he asks, wrapping an arm around Daniel’s waist and smiling up at him tenderly.

That’s what does it, really. Kurt had been entertaining himself just fine before this, mocking his fellow partygoers from behind the rim of his cup or, occasionally, to their faces. Even watching Blaine interact with his boyfriend hadn’t been too painful. For the most part, Daniel had been surrounded by blonde party girls who wanted him to pour them shots and do his “funny” Conan O’Brien impression. Blaine had mostly stuck to Kurt’s side, seemingly content to follow his boyfriend’s progress around the room with his eyes. Anytime Daniel had flitted over to their corner, they had kept their affection pared down to small, chaste touches. 

Now that Daniel has hinted about wanting alone time though, it’s as though both boys have been stripped naked and all Kurt can see is the intimate way Blaine’s fingers brush up and down Daniel’s side, familiar enough to know the fine line between what will tease and what will tickle. Kurt knows exactly what they’ll be getting up to once he finally leaves them alone. Perversely, he wants to ignore Daniel’s request and stick around, forcing them to keep things PG. 

Instead, he leaves, not willing to put himself through the torture of witnessing them cuddle together on a twin bed while he tosses and turns on a hard floor. He makes his excuses to Blaine and does his best to ignore Daniel’s grateful smile. During his drive back to Dalton, he occupies himself with the considerably worse torture of envisioning the different ways they could be fucking each other. He wonders if that makes him a masochist or just a very good friend.

\--- 

By the time Mercedes shows up on Christmas Eve with Quinn and Tina in tow, Kurt is already half-way through a pint of Ben and Jerry’s and he’s curled up in bed, wearing sweatpants and a terry cloth robe. Mercedes takes one look at him and tugs the ice cream out of his hands.

“Hey, I was eating that!” Kurt complains.

“You’ll thank me in the morning when you don’t have to clean chocolate stains out of your duvet cover.” She punctuates her sentence by dropping the ice cream in his wastebasket.

“Hey,  _I_  could have eaten that!” Quinn says and leans over the can like she’s thinking about digging it out again. “Oh, it’s Cherry Garcia. Never mind.”

She wrinkles her nose at him but Kurt ignores her. He’s not about to let someone who ate Dorito sandwiches for four months question his choice in comfort food.

“So, you want to tell us why you’re in bed sulking instead of getting ready to spread a little Christmas cheer for Mr. Schue?” Mercedes asks. 

She climbs into bed with him, making him move out of the nice warm nest of pillows he had constructed in the middle of the bed, while Tina perches at the foot of the bed and Quinn takes the desk chair.

“I told you, I don’t feel well.”

“Funny, you sound just fine,” Quinn points out.

“Yeah, I don’t hear any coughing. And yep, no used tissues, so it can’t be sinuses,” Tina says, making a big show of looking around the room for some sign of evidence.

“I have a headache."

It’s a lie, of course, and he knows they’ll never let him get away with it. Still, he wishes his friends would leave him alone to mope, just this once.

“Come on, we know you’re lying. Just tell us what’s up. Did Clark Kent do something wrong?” Mercedes asks, prodding him gently in the side.

This is so stupid. He’s pouting over nothing. 

“No.” He pauses, reconsiders. “Yes. I don’t know.”

“Well, that clears things up,” Quinn remarks. She catches the pillow Kurt throws at her and wraps her arms around it.

“Before we left for break, he asked me to sing  _Baby, It’s Cold Outside_  with him,” Kurt blurts out. 

The girls exchange perplexed looks and Mercedes finally asks, “Oookay. And this is a bad thing, why?”

“Because. I’m in love with him and he has a boyfriend that he’s never going to break up with because they’re freaking perfect together and I’m just some charity case that he flirts with whenever he feels like it. It’s a bad thing because I love him but I can never be with him, and I can’t  _stop_  loving him because every time I turn around, he’s doing things like singing about how he thrills when I touch his hand! I’m sick of it and I just want to eat my ice cream in peace, dammit!” Kurt rants, his voice rising as he carries on. 

All three girls are staring at him now with wide eyes and yeah, maybe he’s been holding all of that in for a little too long. Instead of it making him feel better though, he feels even more miserable. He sinks down into the bed and pulls the covers up to his chin. Mercedes reaches out to pet his hair and while normally he’d object, it feels nice, so he lets her do it just this once.

“You should tell him,” Tina says.

“What? That’s a terrible idea!” Quinn retorts. “He just said Blaine wasn’t going to break up with his boyfriend.”

“He doesn’t know that! He won’t know how Blaine  _really_  feels about him unless he  _tells_  him,” Tina says, waving her arms for emphasis.

“Isn’t the fact that he hasn’t broken up with what’s-his-name a pretty good indicator that he doesn’t feel the same way about Kurt?” Quinn shoots back, not even bothering to send an apologetic glance Kurt’s way.

He’s starting to feel like he’s watching a tennis match.

“Well maybe he doesn’t want to leave a perfectly good relationship when he’s not sure how Kurt feels."

“Oh, I’m sure he knows by now,” Kurt tells them. He almost pulls the covers all the way over his head so he won't have to look at them when he tells them what a fool he's been.

“What do you mean?” asks Mercedes with dread in her voice.

“I was pretty obvious while we were singing together. I mean, I suppose he could mistake it as just being a performance but—“ Kurt pauses and shakes his head. “No, it was almost as bad as Rachel chasing Mr. Schuester around the piano during  _Endless Love_. He would have to be blind to ignore the way I was looking at him.” 

“And how was he looking at you?”

“I don’t know. The same I guess? He was very flirty, but that really could have just been him getting into the performance. He only sang with me because he needed to practice for some gig at King’s Island,” he tells them with a shrug. He really wishes Mercedes hadn’t thrown his ice cream away. There wasn’t anything else in the wastebasket, though, so as long as it didn’t fall in upside down, he could probably still eat it after they left.

“Wait, King’s Island in Mason?” Tina asks.

“Yeah, why?”

Tina starts laughing and doesn’t shut up until Quinn throws her pillow at her.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she says, holding her hands up. “It’s just that I was right. He is so into you. King’s Island closes in October and doesn’t open again until April. Mike and I went right before they closed for the season.”

“He said it was for the King’s Island Christmas Spectacular. He was very specific.” Kurt says, shrugging off Mercedes’ hand and sitting up. He feels a tiny flame of hope start to curl around his heart and he firmly snuffs it out.

“Quinn, look it up,” Mercedes says, jutting her chin towards Kurt’s laptop.

They all wait silently while Quinn searches for the supposed event. 

“The only thing I can find on it is an article from 2005 about how they’re bringing it back. Let me check the park’s website,” Quinn reports. Less than a minute later, she turns to face them with a wide smile. “Tina was right.”

Kurt has no idea what to feel right now. His heart feels like it wants to knock out his sternum and fly across the room but his head is still telling him that none of this means anything.

“I really don’t—“ Kurt begins before Mercedes cuts him off.

“No. Listen, this is what you’re going to do. You’re going to get out of this bed and stop feeling sorry for yourself because we now have proof that you have absolutely no reason for it.” She throws the covers back and tugs on his arm for emphasis. 

“But—“

“I’m not finished. Now, you’re going to make yourself look fabulous because we have to be at Mr. Schue’s in half an hour and you’re coming with us. And when we’re done making him feel like less of a loser, you’re going to call Blaine and tell him how you feel about him.”

“What?! I am not!” He’s just not. Ever.

Tina has started pulling clothes out of his closet and tossing them at him and that, more than anything Mercedes is saying, gets him moving. He loves Tina but he isn’t about to let someone with her fashion sense dress him.

“You  _are_ ,” Mercedes insists. “The boy is obviously crazy about you if he’s willing to make up that story just so he can sing that date rape song with you. He just needs a push before he breaks it off with his boy.”

“But what if he’s not?” Kurt asks them. Nothing Blaine does is obvious to him, no matter what his friends might think.

“Then you tell him to stop being such a jerk and to stop leading you on,” Quinn says, pounding her fist down on the desk for emphasis.

He whines and what-ifs at them the whole way to Mr. Schuester’s but he’s feeling much better by the time Rachel puts him to work arranging crudités on a Christmas Tree-shaped platter. He still has his doubts about the girls’ plan but he’s tired of pining away silently; it’s bad for his complexion. 

\--- 

The morning of January 2nd, Kurt is a walking cliché of nervous tension. His hair won’t behave, he burns one of his uniform shirts with the iron, and he can’t even begin to think about eating breakfast. He bids a hasty good-bye to his family and heads for Dalton, his anxiety growing exponentially until he finally snaps out of it, puts Britney on, and sings along at the top of his lungs. 

It’s still early when he pulls into the student parking lot, but he ignores the multitude of empty spots near the entrance and parks the Navigator in the far corner of the lot, not wanting to risk damage to the paint job. He’s glad that Blaine’s Audi isn’t present yet, because he can definitely use a little extra time to plan his speech and get himself under control. 

By 11 o’clock, his jitters have worn off completely and he’s ready to face Blaine and tell him the truth. He walks the 83 steps from his room to Blaine’s with confidence and knocks on the door with purpose. Then Henry opens the door and he’s completely thrown. Somehow, with all of his planning he had forgotten that Blaine has a roommate.

“Oh. Hi. Is Blaine back yet?” Kurt asks, recovering quickly. 

“Nope, not yet. You want me to tell him you came by when he gets in?” Henry asks and leans casually against the doorjamb. 

“Yeah, could you? I mean, no. It’s nothing important. It can wait. I just wanted to say hi.” Kurt realizes he’s babbling and shuts his mouth with a snap.

Henry’s just stares at him, confused. “So is that a yes or a no?”

“No? No. I’ll see him later. It’s fine.” Kurt turns away abruptly and speeds back to his room.

Three more hours tick by and Kurt watches Henry lose a little more of his patience each time Kurt knocks on his door. 

“He’s not back yet. I  _promise_  I will tell him to go find you the second he gets here,” he grinds out before Kurt can even open his mouth.

“When who gets here?” 

Kurt whirls around to face Blaine, who immediately wraps him in a hug. He lets out a squeak of surprise but returns the embrace, while behind him, he hears Henry laugh at them before shutting the door. Blaine pulls away much sooner than he would like but Kurt’s encouraged by such an affectionate greeting.

“Hey. Happy New Year,” Blaine tells him once they’ve moved out of each other’s dance space.

“Happy New Year. Long drive? You look pretty tired,” Kurt notes with concern.

Blaine looks exhausted, actually. He’s smiling, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes and there’s a subtle slump to his shoulders. 

“Yeah.” 

It’s just one word, but there’s a mountain of emotion behind it and for the first time since Christmas Eve, Kurt forgets about his big plan to confess his love to Blaine. 

“Was there a lot of traffic? You got here a lot later than you said you would,” he says, silently urging Blaine to tell him what has him so out of sorts. 

“It’s kind of a long story. Let me put this away and we can go to your room and I’ll tell you all about it,” Blaine says, nodding at his bulging suitcase. 

The walk back to Kurt’s room is silent because Blaine seems to be thinking very hard about something and Kurt doesn’t want to interrupt. He’s dying to know what’s going on, but he enjoys watching Blaine chew on his lower lip and furrow his brow in thought. 

When Kurt sits down on his bed, Blaine looks around the room as though he’s not sure how they got there. 

“I didn’t even think to ask. Is Andrew back yet? Will we bother him if we hang out in here for a while?” Blaine asks.

“He said he’s planning on getting here just before curfew. I think he’s still recovering from New Year’s."

Blaine still hasn’t taken a seat, he just stands awkwardly between the two beds, facing Kurt, but staring at the collage on his pinboard. Kurt glances over his shoulder at it but he can't see anything that would draw so much of Blaine's focus.  

“My car hissed at me today,” Blaine announces, out of nowhere.

“Did you leave a snake in the glove box?” Kurt jokes. This conversation is already awkward, why not tip it toward absurd?

Blaine gives him a startled smile and finally sits down next to him on the bed. He’s close enough that all Kurt has to do is shift his weight a little to the right and he’ll brush up against him. He doesn’t, but he imagines the sensation so perfectly that it’s almost as if he had.

“No. I drove for six hours today and I don’t think it appreciated the work out.”

“You really need to take better care of that car, you know. It’s almost as old as you are.” There was just no excuse for neglecting regular automotive maintenance, in Kurt’s opinion. He’d heard his father rant on the subject too many times to think otherwise.

“I know, I know. I wasn’t  _planning_  on spending my entire day driving, it just worked out that way.” Blaine paused, seemingly debating his next sentence. “I drove down to Cincinnati to see Daniel.”

That hurts. He hasn’t forgotten that Blaine has a boyfriend – it’s very much in the forefront of his mind – he just hadn’t expected Blaine to drive two hours out of his way to go see him on the day Kurt had chosen to reveal his feelings. Still, he’s never let a bad idea get in his way before.

“Oh? How is Daniel?” Kurt asks.  He tries for a light tone, but it falls somewhat short of "interested" and probably sounds more like "strained."

“Um, probably not great. I drove down there to break up with him.”

Kurt knows he’s staring but there are too many things running through his mind right now to even attempt responding to that. He’s trying really, really hard not to smile or do that thing he does when he’s trying not to smile and probably ends up looking constipated. Blaine is staring right back at him, his face unreadable, and Kurt wishes Blaine would give him a little more to work with. He can’t even tell if Blaine is upset. He just looks tired, maybe vaguely worried.

“Oh,” is all he can really think to say. He’s not sure if he’s supposed to ask if Blaine wants to talk about it. Blaine is, first and foremost, his friend but he’s also suddenly a love interest with actual potential. What he really wants to do is jump up and down and yell, “Me, me! Choose me! I love you!”

“Yeah,” Blaine says with a deep sigh. “You know, I really am pretty tired and I don’t think I could talk about it right now even if I wanted to. Could we maybe just watch a movie or something?” 

His eyes are pleading but it’s completely unnecessary. Kurt is so relieved at not having to talk about any former or current gushy feelings Blaine might have for another boy that he practically teleports over to his bookshelf.

“Finn got me  _Inception_  for Christmas, you want to watch that?” he asks, waving the DVD case.

“Pretty boys, excellent special effects, and a plot that’s complicated enough to keep my mind off my troubles? Sounds perfect,” Blaine tells him, giving him a relieved smile.

The movie is by no means boring but Kurt’s seen it before. He’s far more interested in the feel of Blaine’s arm as it presses into his from shoulder to elbow or the slow, distracted tapping of Blaine’s toes against his ankle. About halfway through, Kurt absently lets his right leg roll outwards, his knee crooking just a bit. It brings their legs into contact and they both startle at the touch. Before he can even think of straightening his knee and moving away, Blaine nudges him with his shoulder and grins at him. Kurt decides to leave his leg where it is, enjoying the heat and closeness and the way his body nearly hums with the urge to push Blaine down onto the bed and kiss away all thoughts of ex-boyfriends that might be lingering in his head.

\--- 

The reintroduction to classes and the rigors of school life is brutal. Kurt has three quizzes and two papers due on Friday and an oral presentation on what made Charlemagne the “father of Europe” on the following Monday. What starts out as a stiff neck on Tuesday evening morphs into what Kurt tells himself is surely a migraine by Thursday afternoon. He finds himself lying on one of the leather couches in the Warblers room, not sure how he managed to find the power to get there. An alarm on his phone tells him he has fifteen minutes before rehearsal starts just as Blaine’s face enters his field of vision.

“Are you okay?” he asks, his eyebrows drawn together in concern.

While Kurt appreciates the concern, he would rather Blaine didn’t see him in such a weakened state. He sits up quickly and his stomach and head protest as one against the sudden movement. The nausea is new but it fades as soon as he stills.

“I’m fine. Just a bit of a headache.”

“Are you sure? You look terrible. Well, you actually look great, as usual, but you look paler than normal,” Blaine tells him, taking a seat next to him on the sofa.

A compliment like that would normally send Kurt’s heart aflutter, but that would take more energy than he can muster at the moment.

“I’m sure. I just need to get through the next four days and then I can relax.” It’s his mantra at this point.  _Four more days, four more days._

“Well here, maybe I can help you relax a little right now,” Blaine says. 

Suddenly Blaine’s warm hand is rubbing gently at the base of his skull and he must make some kind of noise at the feel of it because Blaine stills after only a few seconds.

“Is this okay?” he asks, his tone uncertain.

“Y-yeah."  Blaine touching him will  _always_  be okay. 

Blaine starts up again and Kurt can feel how close Blaine is sitting, closer than he needs to be, but only his hands making contact. His left hand is kneading the back of his neck, moving up to scratch through the back of Kurt’s hair every so often, while his right hand moves over his shoulder in slow and calming circles. He should bitch about his hair getting messed up but this is the first time Blaine has touched him with this much intent since he pulled Kurt down the northwest corridor by the hand. Kurt wouldn’t give this up for the world.

“Is this working at all?” Blaine asks quietly.

“Yeah. I mean, my head still hurts, but—“ His breath catches as Blaine hits a particularly sensitive spot. “Oh  _God_.” Behind him, he thinks Blaine’s breath might have stuttered a bit there too. 

“Shh. People are going to think I’m doing dirty things to you,” Blaine teases. 

“Sorry,” Kurt says, smiling and trying not to think about him and Blaine in less than innocent situations. Even with the throbbing pain in his head, it’s difficult to keep his mind out of the gutter and he wishes the room wasn’t about to be filled with Warblers.

Thad enters the room and sets about maneuvering the council table into its usual position. He doesn’t even appear to notice them, but Blaine gives his neck one final squeeze before smoothing his hair back down.

“I should go help him set up,” Blaine says reluctantly. “I hope that helped.”

“It did. Thank you.” Kurt can still feel the impressions of Blaine’s fingers on his neck and he’s probably just imagining it but his headache really does seem to have faded.

“Anytime,” he says, winking at him before hurrying off to help Thad. 

Kurt manages not to swoon, but he has to work to keep the ridiculous smile off his face for the next few hours. 

\--- 

“Why won’t you let me hear you sing?” Blaine asks him out of the blue one day. 

It’s the following week and even though there’s still the usual amount of homework, he doesn’t have any major assignments due for another month. After the stress of the previous week, Kurt finally feels like he can take a deep breath and relax for a minute. He’s taking the opportunity to read the latest issue of  _Vogue_  and Blaine is stretched out beside him on the bed, reading over his shoulder.

“What are you talking about? You hear me sing all the time,” Kurt says, idly flipping the page.

“No I don’t. You hum along with the radio but you don’t sing along. You’ve never let me listen to any of the recordings you’ve made. During Warblers rehearsal, the whole idea is for your harmonies to blend with everyone else’s. I can pick out your voice if I try but it’s not the same,” Blaine tells him, ticking his complaints off on his fingers. “I’ve heard you sing by yourself three times. Once for your Warblers audition, once for your solo audition, and once when you rehearsed  _Baby, It’s Cold Outside_  with me.”

Kurt closes the magazine and tips his head to the side while considering Blaine’s question. He’s right, of course. Before his transfer to Dalton, Kurt had been very deliberate about hiding his talents, and those of the rest of New Directions, from his new friend. There’s no reason to keep any of that from Blaine now, though, and there hasn’t been for a long time. Plus, now he has the perfect opportunity to ask about that fake rehearsal.

“I suppose it’s just that you haven’t asked in a while. I had to keep it from you before but it doesn’t matter now,” he says, rolling off the bed and moving over to where his laptop is open on the desk.

“What? Why did you have to keep it from me?” Blaine asks, his eyebrows drawn together in puzzlement. 

“To prevent sabotage,” Kurt says with a shrug.

“You thought I would sabotage New Directions?”

Blaine’s voice is filled with hurt and when Kurt glances over at him, he’s  _looks_  hurt. He’s glaring at Kurt like he just insulted his mother. Kurt’s confused by his reaction. Of course he planned for possible sabotage; that’s just what they do. New Directions has been foiled too many times in its short existence not to. He knows he’s told Blaine how hated they were, but maybe Blaine doesn’t really understand just how cutthroat the world of Ohio high school show choir is.

“Have I ever told you about Jesse St. James?” Kurt asks. He’s a little amazed that he’s able to get the name out without hissing.

“Only in passing. He was the male lead of Vocal Adrenaline, right?” Blaine isn’t looking hurt anymore, just confused.

“Yes, and for a short while, he was a member of New Directions. I won’t go into the details because you won’t believe half of them, but the short version of the story is that Jesse was sent to seduce Rachel, make her emotionally compromised, and then completely crush her spirit right before Regionals so that we wouldn’t be able to compete. His plan involved the reveal of her biological mother, a dramatic dance number in our auditorium, and egging her in the parking lot.”

Blaine goggles at him for a moment before asking, “Isn’t Rachel a vegan?”

“Yes. She cried about baby chick fetuses for over an hour.” Sadly, Kurt remembers every second of it. He’d felt guilty about eating eggs for almost a month afterwards.

“Oh my God.” 

Blaine looks appropriately horrified but also a little amused. He can’t really blame him because he’d probably find it funny too if he hadn’t been the one to help Rachel clean egg yolk out of her hair. 

“That wasn’t the only time we were sabotaged, either. We put up with a lot of crap last year and it would have been incredibly stupid of me to ignore that just because I  _thought_  I could trust you.”

Blaine nods and Kurt breathes a silent sigh of relief. He really doesn’t want something like glee to get between them now that they finally seem to be moving out of the friend zone.

“Hey, I understand,” Blaine says, holding up his hands. “I would never ask you to choose between them and us. But now that you know I’m not an evil saboteur, can I  _please_ hear you sing?”

“Yes, of course. I should warn you that I’ll only allow you to listen to my songs. Anything featuring the group is still off limits. I may be a Warbler now but New Directions is still family.” An annoying family, filled with a million squabbling siblings and an embarrassing uncle who tries too hard to seem hip, but family nonetheless. 

Blaine fishes his iPod out of his pants pocket and eagerly hands it over. “Load it up. I want to hear everything you’ll let me hear.”

Kurt takes the iPod, but instead of connecting it, he simply sets it on the desk and pins Blaine with a hard stare. He still needs to know about their duet.

“You can have the songs as soon as you tell me why you lied to me.”

“When did I lie to you?” Blaine asks.  

He looks so aghast at the accusation that for a second, Kurt doubts the omniscience of the internet, but plows on anyway.

“Before Christmas. You asked me to help you rehearse for a gig that didn’t exist,” Kurt says. He crosses his arms and raises an expectant eyebrow at him. If Tina’s theory is right, Kurt doesn’t actually have a reason to be mad here, but Blaine doesn’t know about that.

“Ah, that.” Blaine gives him a sheepish look and scratches at the back on his neck. “I apologize for lying. I don’t really have an excuse for it except that it seemed like a good idea at the time.”

“That’s it? That’s all I get? ‘It seemed like a good idea at the time’?” Kurt asks, incredulous. He hadn’t been expecting a dramatic declaration of love but he  _had_  hoped for a little more than that.

“I don’t have a better excuse than that. I have a tendency to over think things and plan for every eventuality but for some reason, whenever I get around you, my brain just stops working and all I can do is react. You come here to spy on the Warblers and I drag you straight to the performance so I can show off. You tell me your bully sexually assaulted you and I jump in the car and drive two hours to help you confront him. I got detention for that, by the way,” he says, pausing in his rant to mock glare at Kurt. “You won’t let me hear you sing but go on endlessly about how great you are, so I lie about a gig so you’ll have to sing with me. It’s not my fault. Being friends with you just makes me act like an idiot.”

“You think it’s  _my_  fault you have no self-control?” Kurt asks. He’s offended and deliriously happy all at once. Blaine hasn’t really admitted anything, but at the same time, he kind of has.

“Yep,” Blaine says with a laugh. “I was perfectly fine before you came along. You’re a bad influence on me.”

“ _I’m_  a bad influence? Funny, I don’t think it’s me who's always interrupting you when you’re trying to study,” Kurt teases, not even bothering to dampen his smile.

“Hey, I’m just trying to prevent those killer headaches you get. I’m looking out for you. It’s only fair that you repay me by letting me  _finally_  listen to the fifty million recordings you have of yourself so I can catch up on everything I’ve been missing. And when I’m done listening to all of those, you’re going to sing with me again because we sound  _great_ together,” Blaine says, nudging his iPod closer to Kurt’s hand.

“There are 74, not ‘fifty million.’ And don’t even try to pretend that you wouldn’t have just as many recordings of yourself if you had the hook-ups I had with the A/V club,” Kurt says, finally hooking the iPod up to his laptop. He turns away from Blaine to hide his blush. They really do sound great together and his heart beats a little faster at the thought of singing with him again.

“That’s probably true. I don’t want to know what you had to do to get those hook-ups though.”

“Nothing sinister. Mostly we pay them in candy and the occasional answer key on a Spanish test. Mr. Schuester is naively trusting with where he leaves his briefcase,” Kurt says with a shrug. 

“You know, sometimes when you talk about McKinley, it sounds like something out of a prison movie,” Blaine says, his eyes wide. 

“Most days, that’s exactly what it felt like,” Kurt says, handing back Blaine’s iPod. 

“All schools feel like prisons but at least this one has a really good coffee cart,” Blaine says with a grin as he moves toward the door.

“Where are you going?” he asks, puzzled. They haven’t even gotten to the article on Prince William’s wedding yet.

“To go listen to your songs, dummy,” Blaine replies, leaving the room with one last smile. 

Kurt collapses onto his bed with a happy sigh just as Andrew comes in.

“What has you in such a good mood?” he asks, his eyes narrowed in suspicion

“Nothing. Just having a good day,” Kurt replies, trying to school his expression into something a little less lovesick.

“Did Blaine ask you out? Because I just passed him in the hall and he was practically skipping,” Andrew says, hooking a thumb over his shoulder.

Kurt rolls his eyes at Andrew’s hostile tone. Most of the time they got along great, but sometimes Andrew reminded him a little too strongly of Finn and he wasn’t looking for another brother.

“No, he didn’t ask me out. Not yet, anyway,” he says with a smirk.

“He just broke up with his boyfriend. You really want to be his rebound guy?” Andrew's eyebrow arches in derision and he rolls his eyes in response.

Kurt watches as his roommate sits on the edge of his bed and takes off his socks, flinging them in the general direction of his closet. Yep, all of the worst qualities of his step-brother in one convenient Andrew-shaped package.

“No, of course not. Look, I know you hate Blaine, but try to mind your own business on this one, okay? I promise I won’t nag you about picking up your dirty laundry for a whole week if you just stop ragging on Blaine.”

“I don’t hate him. I don’t!” he protests at Kurt’s incredulous look. “I just think he’s kind of a pretentious douche who makes weird faces when he sings. And he’s always beating my grade in physics,” he says with a scowl.

Kurt just laughs at him and goes back to his  _Vogue_ , ignoring his roommate’s mutterings about Napoleon complexes and wondering which song Blaine was listening to right at that moment. 

\--- 

Saturday morning finds Kurt in a great mood. There’s a long weekend ahead of them, meaning three whole days without having to even touch that despicable navy blazer, and Kurt has a special outfit picked out for tonight’s excursion to Columbus with Blaine. It’s not a date, of course, just a movie with a friend, but it is a good reason to look his best. If tonight goes anything like the rest of this week has gone, there will be lots of shameless flirting, casual touching, and singing of love songs. Six o’clock can’t arrive soon enough and Kurt is determined to spend the day running errands to distract himself.

“What the  _fuck_?” Andrew exclaims from the threshold of the front entrance.

Kurt’s eyes widen in surprise before he glances around to see if there are any faculty around to hear. Depending on who catches you, language like that can result in either a stern warning or a trip to the headmaster’s office. Andrew turns around and puts his hands on Kurt’s shoulders, pushing him further back into the building.

“You know, we can wait to go to Target. I don’t really need shampoo after all.”

“Well, I really  _do_  need toothpaste. What’s going on out there?” Kurt asks, pushing Andrew aside and opening the heavy door. He instantly wishes he hadn’t.

Not even fifty feet from the front door of the school is Blaine. With him is Daniel and they appear to be sucking each other’s faces off. Oh.

“Kurt? Breathe,” Andrew instructs gently. “Come on, man, let’s go back upstairs.”

Kurt sucks in a lungful of air and takes a hesitant step towards his car.

“I can’t. I need toothpaste." Turning his head purposefully away from the couple, he walks calmly toward his car and gets in. 

Andrew follows him, alternating between watching him with wary eyes and staring over his shoulder at where Blaine must still be making out with his ex-boyfriend.  _No,_  Kurt tells himself,  _they probably aren’t exes anymore._

He starts the car and heads for the lot exit, his eyes still averted. 

“Kurt—“ 

“Shut up, Andrew. Just shut the fuck up. I don’t want to hear an ‘I told you so’ right now, okay? I just want to get some damn toothpaste. He’s not my boyfriend and it’s none of my damn business what he does. I realize that now. So let’s just go to Target and forget about it, okay?” Kurt’s a little surprised at the vicious tone of his voice, but he isn’t sorry.

“I was just going to say that they stopped and Blaine looked pretty upset,” Andrew replies timidly.

“I  _really_  do not care.”

He does though. Of course he does. The problem is that Blaine clearly doesn’t care about him. Not in the same way; not in the way that counts. Well, he’s done. He’s done with falling for unavailable boys with gorgeous voices and he is absolutely done letting Blaine Anderson stomp all over his heart.


End file.
